WNBA’s greatest players of all time: Ranking the 30 best in 30-season history
Oct 22, 2026, 09:00 AM ET Open Extended Reactions
As the WNBA Finals wrap up the league’s 30th season, it’s time for one of the hardest countdowns: ranking the top 30 players in WNBA history.
No. 1 shouldn’t be a surprise, even if she just missed being on ESPN’s top-25 list for the league’s 25th anniversary in 2021: A’ja Wilson‘s past five years have been extraordinary.
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We surveyed WNBA experts from across ESPN; 23 voters sent in ballots, with the top 30 vote-getters making the list.
It’s always difficult to evaluate careers from different eras, and the talent pool keeps growing with the league. Which players from the WNBA’s earlier years perpetually stay in this kind of ranking, and which might be replaced?
In 2021, two players who already won MVP awards still did not make our top 25. Now, though, the Las Vegas Aces‘ Wilson has jumped to the top spot, and the New York Liberty‘s Jonquel Jones is No. 27. Both have won WNBA titles since 2021; Wilson, in fact, has since won three championships, and also is now a five-time MVP.
No ranking will satisfy everyone, but these 30 players — including seven who competed in the 2026 season — stood out the most for our panel as the best ever.
More:
Snubs and other overlooked players | Voting panel
C | Las Vegas Aces (2018-present)
Career stats: 26.2 PPG, 9.4 RPG, 1.9 BPG
Highlights (17 first-place votes): Three championships (2022, 2023, 2025); five-time MVP (2020, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026); two-time Finals MVP (2023, 2025); three-time Defensive Player of the Year; five-time All-Defensive first team; three-time scoring champ; career scoring average leader (22.05); five-time All-WNBA first team; Commissioner’s Cup champion (2022)
Wilson was the most debated player left off our 2021 list, primarily because she had been in the WNBA for only four seasons then. She has won four of her five MVPs since and overwhelmingly claimed the No. 1 ranking. Aces coach Becky Hammon jokes that she has nearly exhausted her list of compliments for Wilson, but she will have to keep working on it. Wilson, who turned 30 in August, still has more great basketball to come. — Michael Voepel
Stephen Gosling/NBAE via Getty Images
2. Diana Taurasi
G | Phoenix Mercury (2004-24)
Career stats: 18.8 PPG, 3.9 RPG, 4.2 APG
Highlights (five first-place votes): Three championships (2007, 2009, 2014); MVP (2009); two-time Finals MVP (2009, 2014); all-time leading scorer (only player over 10,000 points); five-time scoring champ; 10-time All-WNBA first team
Think of any basketball superlative and it applies to Taurasi. Tough. A winner. Clutch. Unrelenting. Brilliant as a shooter, passer and playmaker. She won big. She scored big. She played big. She has always been the player no one could take their eyes off of. Don’t turn away because something great could happen. To say she was born with the “clutch gene” is to greatly undersell just how good Taurasi was at the end of games. That Taurasi is the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer — and more than 2,000 points ahead of second-place Tina Charles — is a testament to her sustained brilliance. — Charlie Creme
Adam Hagy/NBAE via Getty Images
3. Maya Moore
F | Minnesota Lynx (2011-18)
Career stats: 18.4 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 3.3 APG, 1.7 SPG, 45.3 FG%
Highlights: Four championships (2011, 2013, 2015, 2017); MVP (2014); Finals MVP (2013); Rookie of the Year (2011); one-time scoring champion; five-time All-WNBA first team; two-time All-Defensive team
Moore is the one player on this list for whom fans will forever ask, “What if?” Her career was short by superstar standards. But those eight years before she stepped away to help fight for criminal justice reform were just so good. Five times in that span she was the top scorer on a Lynx team that made the Finals six times and won four titles. Moore played with a smooth precision that looked like she was one step ahead of everyone, yet needing half the effort to do it. When Moore decided to step away from basketball after the 2018 season, she was still in her prime, one of the WNBA’s best players, averaging 18.0 points and leading the league in steals, while earning All-WNBA second-team honors. — Creme
Andy King/Getty Images
4. Cynthia Cooper
G | Houston Comets (1997-2000, 2003)
Career stats: 21.0 PPG, 3.3 RPG, 4.9 APG, 45.9 FG%
Highlights (one first-place vote): Four championships (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000); two-time MVP (1997, 1998); four-time Finals MVP (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000); second in career scoring average (20.98 PPG); three-time scoring champion; four-time All-WNBA first team
Cooper has the shortest tenure — only four full seasons — of anyone on this list because she was already 34 when the league started. But her brilliant overseas career, mostly in Italy, helped her be ready to still excel in the WNBA. The new league needed a star to get it off the ground, and Cooper was that player. It seems serendipitous that the team Cooper made famous — the Houston Comets — returns next year after the 30th anniversary celebration this season. The Comets folded during the global financial crisis in 2008 but will be revived with the Connecticut Sun’s relocation to Houston in 2027. — Voepel
Ronald Martinez /Allsport
5. Lisa Leslie
C | Los Angeles Sparks (1997-2009)
Career stats: 17.3 PPG, 9.1 RPG, 2.4 APG, 47.0 FG%
Highlights: Two championships (2001, 2002); three-time MVP (2001, 2004, 2006); two-time Finals MVP (2001, 2002); 16th all time in scoring, eighth in rebounds, third in blocks; three-time rebounding champion; two-time Defensive Player of the Year; two-time All-Defensive first team; eight-time All-WNBA first team; first to dunk in a WNBA game
The Sparks just unveiled a statue of Leslie outside Crypto.com Arena in September, but her aura has never left the building. An original WNBA player along with Sheryl Swoopes and Rebecca Lobo, Leslie is one of the greatest centers in hoops history. At 25 when the WNBA launched, Leslie didn’t have a league to play in for the first three years of her post-college prime. She also sat out one year on maternity leave. Still, Leslie finished with 12 exceptional seasons and was an All-WNBA selection her final year, shooting a career-high 51.8% from the field then. — Voepel
Source: www.espn.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.